NBA officiating credibility

[D Dub]

I'd like to see a petition circulated amongst season ticket holders of all teams asking the NBA to replace it's entire officiating staff. 

That seems like a cause that fans of all teams can rally around.  There is no reason why NBA officiating should be so much worse than D1 college.

[youcanthandlethetruth113]

I don't care how it gets done I just want to see the proper calls being made.

It's about getting the game officiated correctly at the end of the day, so given that everyone should be on board for that (including Stern) I don't see why anything/everything isn't being considered in order to achieve that goal.

Everything should be reviewable. Give the Coach's a yellow flag for all I care (just like the NFL).

I don't care about the delays in the game as long as it's in an effort to GET THE CALLS RIGHT.

Right now it is 100% BS.

How did PP only get 3 free throw attempts last night. I can recall at least 2 other occasions when he took the ball to the rack, took body contact from of of L.A.'s bigs, and the refs don't blow a whistle.

[Simulacra]

The officiating is the same it's always been.

The difference is HDTV. You couldn't see these close plays before. It was too fuzzy. Now, every little detail can be examined, in slow motion, in high resolution.

the better replay technology is the big difference. Does anybody actually think that refs were better in the past? I can't imagine anyone actually believes that. We just now see through replays how hard it is to officiate basketball.

Baseball umpires are now coming under fire because of that one blown call in the perfect game. Human error is unavoidable. If people refuse to accept that an move on, there are continual pointless discussions where people try to blame refs for their team losing, though they almost never blame refs for their team winning (like when the refs call 2 phantom fouls on Kobe Bryant).

I think you're ignoring the overall problem....a lot of us are saying the reffing stinks without talking about them wanting one team or another to win the series.....althouth statistics back up that they support the team who's down in the series....which is already a joke....

I don't know the numbers for game 3 but more than a foul per minute in each of the first two games.....3 hour games as someone pointed out.....zero flow....

As I stated after the first game:  If I"m not a fan of L.A. or Boston, I can't watch this.....not only because it's not entertaining, but because it reeks of impurity (of whatever sort) and control freakism....

I think this is a great description of what the officiating is doing. Ive watched a ton of basketball both NBA and NCAA, and I am a Celts fan but my objective self would rather see LA win in a 4 game sweep full of blow outs that was actual basketball than the travesty "control freakism" that has been games 1-3. That is if the games were entertaining, these three games have had moments but they are few and far between and just serve to aggravate.

They are so much worse than the playoff games that proceeded them in entertainment value minus ECF games 4-5 which have a similar stink on them. Its fast becoming very anticlimactic. Not to mention a far too extensive look behind the curtain of whats wrong with the NBA.

I don't care what any idealist says that officiating isn't affecting the outcome. Opinions of this nature are just trying to turn a blind eye and preserve what ever perceived purism still exists for that individual. Its like rooting for or against Bonds or McGwire and completely disregarding how impossibly jacked up they had become.

Fact remains that an objective fan who likes basketball(my wife from Sweden who is watching her first NBA finals)finds little entertainment value in this series.

[D Dub]

I don't care how it gets done I just want to see the proper calls being made.

It's about getting the game officiated correctly at the end of the day, so given that everyone should be on board for that (including Stern) I don't see why anything/everything isn't being considered in order to achieve that goal.

Everything should be reviewable. Give the Coach's a yellow flag for all I care (just like the NFL).

I don't care about the delays in the game as long as it's in an effort to GET THE CALLS RIGHT.

Right now it is 100% BS.

How did PP only get 3 free throw attempts last night. I can recall at least 2 other occasions when he took the ball to the rack, took body contact from of of L.A.'s bigs, and the refs don't blow a whistle.

Yup, look no further than LA's blocked shot total to see where our potential free throws should have been. 

When a game is called so tight that one team takes over 40 FT's -- that same team shouldn't be able to accumulate 14 blocked shots (game 2).  That's just a clear bias.

I'd love to see a stat of how much total time in this series each time has spent in the bonus.  Betcha it's lopsided.

   

[wdleehi]

While the official have no credibility left, they did not effect the outcome.  Lack of shooting killed the outcome.

[FLCeltsFan]

The officiating has become a bigger story than the games themselves.  I  find several links every day that question and condemn the officiating.  These come from media in both Boston and LA and media that have no teams in the Finals but just are disgusted with what they have been seeing. 

The refs have been very inconsistent.  Neither team knows what to expect from one call to the next.  On one end they let them play.  On the other they call a ticky tack foul.  One player gets called for a moving screen and then 5 more get away with them.  There is no consistency whatsoever in how the games have been called. 

Add that to the fact that at least 3 or 4 of the players are in early foul trouble every game. 

And then Herr Stern comes out and says that he is proud of his referees and they are doing an excellent job.  The man is either crooked or an idiot.  It starts at the top.  It's time for David Stern to give up his empire and for the NBA to bring in someone to clean up the mess he has made of the league's credibility.   

[FallGuy]

FallGuy said:
Up until the 90s, defense simply wasn't as physical or intense as it is now. Combine that with faster, stronger athletes and the refs, for all their incompetence at times, are almost in a no-win situation.

OH MY!!!!!

What pre-90s games were you watching to come up with that theory??   It must've been an old all-star game on NBATV.

Todays athletes are faster and stronger.  But the intensity and physicality of todays games are so monitored with idiotic dual technicals, star protecting, and touch fouls.  The game has become so feminized I can't see where you come up with that.  Players are getting suspended for flagrant fouls now that wouldn't have merited anything but a hard foul back then.

I'm not talking about flagrant style fouls. Clearly, that stuff was just a "hard foul" back then. And it doesn't fly today.

Watch guys play D, even in big games. Their effort is, to my eyes, indifferent relative to what we've seen in the last twenty years. They don't battle for position as much, and the overall physicality underneath the basket is less than the battles we've seen this series. In fact, that's partly why the hand-check rules came into play - to reduce the physical D that modern players are interested in playing out on the perimeter.

[FallGuy]

The officiating has become a bigger story than the games themselves.  I  find several links every day that question and condemn the officiating.  These come from media in both Boston and LA and media that have no teams in the Finals but just are disgusted with what they have been seeing. 

The refs have been very inconsistent.  Neither team knows what to expect from one call to the next.  On one end they let them play.  On the other they call a ticky tack foul.  One player gets called for a moving screen and then 5 more get away with them.  There is no consistency whatsoever in how the games have been called. 

Add that to the fact that at least 3 or 4 of the players are in early foul trouble every game. 

And then Herr Stern comes out and says that he is proud of his referees and they are doing an excellent job.  The man is either crooked or an idiot.  It starts at the top.  It's time for David Stern to give up his empire and for the NBA to bring in someone to clean up the mess he has made of the league's credibility.   

I think you've hit on something here. There really is almost as much discussion about the officiating as the games. The league has a growing, public relations problem. Their typical tactic of ignoring the problem and watching the public lose interest in holding them accountable seems to be failing them. What's more - the product on the floor is appalling.

Despite the solid ratings, I can't help but think we're approaching a tipping point in this league.

[KG Fan]

The officiating has become a bigger story than the games themselves.  I  find several links every day that question and condemn the officiating.  These come from media in both Boston and LA and media that have no teams in the Finals but just are disgusted with what they have been seeing. 

The refs have been very inconsistent.  Neither team knows what to expect from one call to the next.  On one end they let them play.  On the other they call a ticky tack foul.  One player gets called for a moving screen and then 5 more get away with them.  There is no consistency whatsoever in how the games have been called. 

Add that to the fact that at least 3 or 4 of the players are in early foul trouble every game. 

And then Herr Stern comes out and says that he is proud of his referees and they are doing an excellent job.  The man is either crooked or an idiot.  It starts at the top.  It's time for David Stern to give up his empire and for the NBA to bring in someone to clean up the mess he has made of the league's credibility.   

Thanks for the information. I am honestly not surprised. As I stated in the original post, many of my friends (who are fans of other teams) are disgusted with the referees.  I haven't been able to look a Lakers fan in the eye or vice-versa and tell them that the game was called decently and the better team won.

I thought the fouls were bad earlier in the playoffs with LeBron getting calls when breathed on and Dwight Howard's elbows knocking everyone out, but this is just ridiculous.  One bright side: I personally feel it is not completely one-sided like those series were.

[guava_wrench]

I don't care how it gets done I just want to see the proper calls being made.

It's about getting the game officiated correctly at the end of the day, so given that everyone should be on board for that (including Stern) I don't see why anything/everything isn't being considered in order to achieve that goal.

Everything should be reviewable. Give the Coach's a yellow flag for all I care (just like the NFL).

I don't care about the delays in the game as long as it's in an effort to GET THE CALLS RIGHT.

Right now it is 100% BS.

How did PP only get 3 free throw attempts last night. I can recall at least 2 other occasions when he took the ball to the rack, took body contact from of of L.A.'s bigs, and the refs don't blow a whistle.

"I don't care how it gets done I just want to see the proper calls being made."

The only way this could happen is by having 6 hour games. You are on your own in accepting that. The game would be so choppy that there would be no flow for the players. Games starting at 7pm would end at 1am. This would kill the NBA.

And still, there would be unavoidable ambiguous calls that unreasonable homer fans would still complain about because inconclusive angles wouldn't be able to overturn them (though the call would be "obvious" to the homer fans).

So much hyperbole and bold statements. It is easy to rant if we set aside reasonableness.

Do you realize that every second on the court, there is a potential missed call? You mention PP's FT count. Does this means you are requiring reviewing of every action on the court that could potentially have a missed whistle. Of course, that would be beyond preposterous.

In the NFL, reviews can only be requested when plays are done. Play in the NBA can continue without break for 5 minutes if there are no turnovers or fouls called. It is hard to imagine how an NFL-like system could be implemented in the NBA. And the NFL has very restricted review, not like what you seem to want to the NBA.

The only real solution is to not play basketball. Or perhaps play with no fouls and with a cage instead of an out of bounds line. No dribbling needed and no more goaltending calls. A sensor in the hoop would determine if the ball has sufficiently passed through the hoop to count a basket. No 3 pt shots since the judgment call would sometimes be ambiguous.

Another option is 20 referees, two per player on the court. That could improve calls, especially if we add sensors to player uniforms that could measure pressure applied to the bodies of players. While it would be difficult to create an AI to analyze the sensor data, but we could have a staff of review refs for each game evaluating alerts generated by an AI to see if flagged behavior is a legitimate call.

This is a problem without a solution. This is not something a commissioner can fix. It is inherent in the sport. It comes down to the realities that fans are willing to accept. With the shift from news articles to opinion blogs and the growth of sports radio and 24 hour sports stations, this will likely only get worse.

[cdif911]

I still don't get why coaches can't have a right of refusal to an assigned ref.  They do this in HS tournament ball in Mass and it works - each coach essentially ranks refs and can blacklist 2 or 3 from their tourney games.  If the NBA adopted this they could see the worst ones and potentially get rid of them.

[dark_lord]

sexyscottish would be proud of this thread! 


the officiating sucks for the following reasons:
-inconsistency--> not just game to game, but literally quarter to quarter within a game

-politics--> a call should be made regardless of the name on the back of the jersey and their abilities.  a 10 day contract d-league rookie at the end of the bench should get the same call or no-call as lbj or kobe.

-egos--> the refs jobs are to call the game, not BE the game


_____________________________________________________________

stern should focus more time and energy in fixing the farce that has become the nba and its officiating and less time marketing the image he wants.  he would rather expand the profits globally and show players reading to kids and making trips to 3rd world countries than having an epic finals series with physical (not dirty) play.

the only time i watch the nba is when the celtics are on.  i legitimately havent watched a single nba game with two team who arent the celts in over 5 yrs.

i posted this in another thread, but it is applicable here as well

[looseball]

Permit me to say:
Aside from the obligatory bashing and whining, there has been a lot of food-for-thought served up on this thread.  Even a few bits of decent humor for dessert.  It's been one of the more enjoyable threads to come on here lately.

[GreenFaith1819]

The title of this thread is a great example of an Oxymoron.

TP to Finkleskyhook for posting this earlier - I had not read entire thread..

[gar]

A suggestion to those who think officiating in the NBA is a joke:

Send the NBA a message about it:
http://www.nba.com/email_us/contact_us.html
(I just did  )

The drop down menu for subject line includes "officiating" .

Will this help much?  Probably not.  But I'm sure there is some zen saying out there how drops of water become a flood or something like that...

Emails are almost pointless. Write a real letter. They carry a lot more weight.

Sent an email last series and got a reply couple of days later. Is easier to track email input and am sure the NBA keeps track of the stats on all correspondence - email makes it easier all around.